This government is fond of telling us that “we are all living longer”. It’s a handy justification for the raising of the retirement age. Even people who ought to know better will accept this statement without criticism and will repeat it as though it was holy writ. But it’s a lie.

The truth is that “we” are not living longer and people die at all ages. Tell the parents of a child who has just died of leukemia or the family who has just lost their 25-year-old son in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan that “we are all living longer” and see how far you get. The newspapers are full of stories of people who have died well before the state retirement age. None of this has registered with the Social Darwinists in government, who all continue to repeat the same lie.

I lost my mother to multiple myeloma in 1994. She was only 62 years old. That’s hardly a ripe old age. So, no, “we” are not living longer. It’s only government ministers who make this claim. What they should say is “life expectancy has increased because of medical science” but it is by no means a universal that everyone is living longer, nor is it a justification to force people to continue working in physically demanding jobs till they drop. I mean, can you see Andrew Lansley or Jacob Rees-Mogg carrying bricks around a building site till they’re 90? No? Neither can I.

One response to ““We’re all living longer”? No, “we” aren’t.”

Spot on, i’ve been on about this for years, It’s not that we are all living longer it’s just that there are less people dying prematurely.Big difference. 2000 years ago there were 80 year old people about but not that many because most died from disease injury or war. I actually heard a politician say that in the future there could be people living to 150 year old, RUBBISH, every living thing has an average lifespan, for humans it’s about 75-80 as long as they stay healthy. The most worrying thing of all is that everyone seems to have fallen for it.
Why doesn’t the government give the real reason behind the propaganda,
that the government and pension companies lost all their money through bad investments so “we” are all going to have to work longer as a result.
When i say “we” i mean the ones who lost out, not the ones who caused the financial disaster.